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Cheerful In Chicago Part 2 – Meh…But Yay!

Our third day in Chicago was pretty meh in terms of the stuff we did – again, Chicago is middling, at best – but we had a really good time together anyway.

We started off the day with coffee from the shop we hit up on the morning of our first day, then we walked up the street to a pancake place. Come on, you guys should have known that was coming because you know that’s my absolute favourite breakfast food.

Waiting for coffee so we can start the day off RIGHT

After breakfast, we ordered up a Lyft and headed into the city to another used book store. This one didn’t hold our interest for very long because we had an appointment to keep – an hour and a half tour of the city’s architecture from the river. To be honest, it was pretty nice but it wasn’t mind blowing. We sat on the top deck of the boat and soaked in the tour guide’s information for the first thirty minutes or so, sipping complementary lemonade and nibbling on complementary cookies. Eventually we decided to go down to the lower deck, which is where we hung out for the rest of the tour.

Bottom deck time!

After the cruise we stopped in a nearby Target so we could sit in its Starbucks and re-charge Emma’s phone (which was also our GPS and ride-getter) before moving on to our next stop. Then we ordered up another Lyft to Wrigleyville. We had our driver drop us off at a coffee place, where we hung out for a bit before starting our trek in search of famous Chicago dogs. Our walk took us pass Wrigley Field, where there would be a concert going that evening. This meant that we walked through throngs of people, a good portion of whom were smoking weed and another smaller portion that could have really used a shower. Eventually we broke away from the throng.

For some reason, Chicago hot dogs have a reputation of being out of this world. I still don’t know why. The place we went to was reputed to have some of the best hot dogs in the city but I’ve made better in my kitchen. Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t bad but they were highly overrated.

Our famous Chicago dogs…meh

By this time it was late afternoon so we got a Lyft to Andersonville, another Chicago neighbourhood. Unfortunately, we got there when most of the stores were closing so we didn’t see much. So we Lyfted back to our Airbnb, resolving to return to Andersonville the next day because we had seen some cute shops that we wanted to visit.

That evening brought another highlight of our trip for me. When we got back to our place, we sat on the stoop for about an hour and a half before going inside, just talking. To be honest, I can’t even remember now what specifically we talked about for all that time but it was a precious time for me. We ended up staying out there until just before 10 pm when it finally got dark and mosquitoes started bothering us.

The next day, our last full day in Chicago, we got a Lyft directly to Andersonville from our place, where we got dropped off at a coffee shop for a light breakfast.

Coffee and muffins, a cozy way to start a Sunday

After lingering there for a while, we ambled up the road to an artists’ collective that we hadn’t had the time to properly explore the evening before. We saw some cute things there but the thing that held our attention for far too long was a display of buttons like this one…

Ha! Pure gold

Then we hit a couple of antique stores, where we had fun fiddling with some really cool things and some very retro things.

No idea which era these shades were from but we were stylin’

Just after noon, we wandered into Giordano’s where we hit Chicago food gold – we had our first deep dish pizza ever. People, real Chicago deep dish pizza is no joke. We ordered a small pizza to share, it came in six slices and we barely managed to finish two each. Look what I mean…

Look how deep that crust is

It was absolutely delicious. We both ate two slices and the crust of our respective third slices because that’s all we could manage, even though all we’d had all day was a muffin and a cup of coffee each. That’s how deep that deep dish pizza was.

After that feast, we really had nothing else to do so we headed back downtown to Millenium Park, then we wandered into the shop at the Art Institute of Chicago, then we found another coffee shop where we hung out some more while sipping cold beverages. Finally, we walked to another nearby food place where we picked up the next day’s breakfast (we needed to be at the airport early and airport food isn’t high on either of our list of desirable food) then went home and had Dairy Queen in the park again before finishing the night watching part of Grease on Netflix.

The next morning, Monday, our Airbnb host dropped us off at the airport at around 6 am. We went through different security checkpoints (as instructed by our different airlines’ representatives) then we met up again midway between our gates and had breakfast together before we had to go catch our flights.

As we walked away from each other that morning, I was really happy. Even though Chicago itself was pretty meh, our four days together were perfect and reminded me of how fun it is to travel with my perfect travel buddy. Why do I say that Emma is my perfect travel buddy? Because we have the exact same travel style – we want to get out and go, and little things don’t get on our nerves. Because we like to explore the same types of things – coffee shops, restaurants, museums, art galleries. Because we share openly and talk a lot but also feel totally comfortable in our silent times. And because we can live together in the same room in absolute harmony. Because of these things, we can travel on the cheap without getting on each others’ nerves and are therefore fully able to enjoy each other’s company.